General Module Function
The tubes module is used to produce open or closed tubes of constant or data dependent radius using 3D lines or polylines as input.
(This feature available only in EVS PRO and MVS)
Module Input Ports
Tubes has one input port that accepts the 3D lines or polylines as input.
Module Output Ports
Tubes has two output ports. The first output port (closest to the left) outputs a new unstructured mesh which contains the tubes. The second port outputs a renderable geometry, which can be connected directly to the Viewer.
Module Control Panel
The control panel for tubes is shown in the figure above.
Radius By: radio buttons allow you to choose constant or data dependent radius scaling.
Node Data for Radius: radio buttons allow you to choose the nodal data component for scaling.
Cell Data for Radius: radio buttons allow you to choose the cell data component for scaling.
The Scale Factor: parameter is multiplied by the nodal data to determine the radius.
The Reset button causes the automatic computation of scale factor to be performed. This is useful if you have changed the scale or the nodal/cell data used.
The Percentile slider allows you to control the automatic scaling of tubes based on the nth percentile value (versus the maximum 100th%). This addresses datasets where there are only a few nodes with extremely high values.
The Tolerance: parameter determines the maximum distance between nodes of adjacent line segments before those line's nodes should be merged to form a polyline. This also applies to closed polyline contours. Closed polylines will have their starting and ending nodes merged to form closed (torroidal) annuli.
The Tube Sides: parameter is The number of faces on the tubes. (the default is 6)
The Run toggle causes the module to run whenever parameters or inputs change.
The Close Tubes toggle causes the tubes to have solid ends. However the tubes are not solid objects (they are hollow).
The Normals Generation toggle turns on Normals Generation for rendering the tubes. This makes their faces more distinct (less smoothed). If you want the tubes to represent cylinders, this should be off.
The Log Process toggle causes the data to be log scaled before it is used for radius scaling. This parameter causes the Zero Radius Magnitude parameter to become active also as shown in the figure below.
The Zero Radius Magnitude parameter is required when using log processing. Since you cannot take the log of zero (or negative values) you must set the value (from inside or outside of your range of data values) that will correspond to a zero radius.
The Phase slider allows you to control the apparent rotation of tubes. A phase of 0.5 rotates 180 degrees.
The Node Map Components check boxes allow you to select those nodal data components that are used for coloring or subsequent subsetting operations.
The Cell Map Components check boxes allow you to select those cell data components that are used for coloring or subsequent subsetting operations.